4/29/2007

Today’s ride was Gene’s “Noodling: 3″ ride. It was a cool and overcast day, but the sun was promised to come out later.

We set out from Victory Park and headed south in to San Gabriel. Then we turned and made a partial loop around to get to South San Gabriel. For some reason, everybody had had their Wheaties this morning, and they were going quite fast. So I found a “FUNERAL” sticker on the street and stuck it on my bike. Then I said something like, “Now will you guys slow down?”

We rode down to the 60 freeway, and then up and over the hill on the south side of it, coming out below Whittier Narrows Dam in Montebello. Then we rode up Lincoln Ave, which is always a big dumping ground. I expected to find an abandoned couch or two, but instead, we found a mermaid statue.

After getting a picture of the mermaid, Philippe and I were quite far behind the group. But Philippe had a solution. He said something like, “let’s catch them” and put his head down and started to motor. I just got on his wheel. In the old days, I would have taken turns pulling, but now I’m lucky just to be able to hang on. He did a fine job of riding very fast and towing me back up to the group.

Next, we rode around the hill in Commerce and headed into West Covina. Then straight north into Irwindale and west back to Myrtle Ave, which brought us into Monrovia. Our snack stop was at Planet Cookies there.

When we got to Planet Cookies, the sidewalk in front was blocked off with police tape. There were two crime-scene investigators there, and there was blood on the sidewalk. They said that there had been some sort of fight ending in murder there last night. This was kind of disturbing, but we went ahead and got our pastries anyway.

While we were sitting there, I saw my old tattoo friend Nikki walking by. I haven’t seen her in over a year, so I flagged her down and we got to visit a bit right there. I also got a souvenir picture, which she insisted should be in front of the crime-scene tape. Nikki’s an interesting character, and I like her a lot.

The way home was a somewhat roundabout route that involved going up and down several unnecessary hills. This was nice. We got back to the park at 44 miles. At that point, I rode down to Incycle with Ben so he could buy a new pair of cleats. So by the time I got home, I had 49.8 miles. I rode around the block one extra time, just to make it a nice round number: